Whenever someone subscribes to my newsletter, they get a confirmation message with a quick thank-you, a nice picture of my mug, and a simple request: I ask them to tell me what their biggest college goals are, and if there’s anything I can do to help them out.
I get a lot of different responses to this question, and I use these responses to plan out new content for the site. When I have time, I also try to personally answer any specific questions I’m asked as well.
One of the most common things I read is:
“I’d like to start my own successful blog. How did you go about building College Info Geek?” – ambitious students (possibly you?)
Now, it’s no secret that I think every student should have their own blog, so I’m very happy to receive and answer questions about building one.
That why today I’ve decided to record a podcast all about the history behind College Info Geek. In this episode, I cover:
- How and why I started College Info Geek
- The catalysts for the blog’s success
- How I’m able to earn a full-time income from running this site
- My most important tips for student wanting to start their own successful blogs
Building College Info Geek has been quite a long journey, and there’s a lot to tell about its progression. Hopefully this episode will give you at least a partial look at the process of building a successful blog 🙂
As promised in the episode, here are a few screenshots showing the major design stages of College Info Geek. As you can see, it wasn’t perfect in the beginning – not even close.
Astute readers may notice that the current design is actually just a refinement of the theme used in Version 3, so I’ll just call this Version 3.5 😉
The point is that – like with anything else – building CIG has been a long, iterative process. This is true for every aspect of the site – my ability as a writer, the design, the quality of the site’s code, the size of my audience, etc.
In the beginning, everything was small and unrefined. Only through consistent effort over time has the current version of the site become a reality.
As I mention in this episode, this is one of the main keys to success. If you’re starting your own project, your success will be dependent on constant, focused effort over time.
Items mentioned in this podcast:
- 14 Hard-Hitting Reasons Why You Must Start Your Own Blog in College
- My first guest post on HackCollege
- ThemeForest – where I get my premium WordPress themes
- The LifeHacker feature
- Powlyglot – my roommate Martin’s language-learning blog
- The Internship Experience series
- The Ultimate Guide to Building a Personal Website
There are a lot of people I have to thank for helping me get this far. In addition to the shout-outs in this episode, I’d like to link to my thank-you page in order to recognize those people.
Things you should do right after listening:
- Start your own blog!
- If you haven’t yet, subscribe to the CIG podcast in iTunes – if you like the podcast so far, please leave a review on iTunes!
Thanks for listening!
If you’d like to start your own blog and have any questions that I didn’t answer in this episode, feel free to ask me anything on Twitter!
If you have a friend who could benefit from this podcast, you should share it with them as well!